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Thorfinn.au writes "A new study indicates that heavy coffee drinking staves off deadly prostate cancer in men. Some 47,911 US men were surveyed over the period 1986 to 2008 for the research. During this time some 5,035 of them developed prostate cancer with 642 dying of it. According to analysis by investigating scientists, men who drank the most coffee (a fairly normal six-plus cups per day) had a 20 per cent lower risk of developing any kind of prostate cancer. If they did get prostate cancer, the java-swillers were much less likely to die from it than others: their risk of deadly prostate cancer was no less than 60 per cent lower than normal. Even less thirsty coffee drinkers who only put away one to three cups daily saw their chance of deadly prostate cancer fall by a useful 30 per cent."

According to the interview with one of the study's authors on NPR today, one of the very important factors is that decaf works as well. Which is to say, the measured benefit probably is not from caffeine.

While caffeine is bitter, it is not the major component of the bitter flavor in coffee, which actually comes from tannins. Tannins take longer to extract than other flavor compounds, so be sure that you do not steep your coffee for longer than six minutes, Most drip coffee makers take at least eight minutes to brew, guaranteeing a bad cup of coffee. I have found that pre-heating the water before putting it in an automatic drip coffee maker can reduce the time it takes to brew. I use an electric kettle, and

What's up with that? There's no reason for it. There's so many kinds of coffee, from single origin, to exact roasting times, to flavored. And then there's decaf. Plain old decaf. I'm trying to cut down my caffeine intake, but it's hard.

Well, over the past couple years....been trying to change the diet...lower carb, more fresh foods.

One part of that change for me is....drastically cutting down caffeine...this mostly came from cokes and other soft drinks.

I read the headline and it said 6 or so cups a day of coffee are NORMAL?!?!?! Geez.....I'd be climbing the walls. Do people actually normally drink that much coffee a day?

Maybe it is me...I was not a coffee drinking till maybe the past 2-4 years. I like the New Orleans strong stuff...with chicory...and some times make some on Sunday mornings. It is strong and I like to cut it with heavy cream, and some booze (brandy, Kahlua, whatever's handy). But man..usually on the 2nd cup, I'm so wired that I can start to see my heart beat under my shirt....

I don't see how anyone could drink over 6 cups a day on average. I know I'm a bit sensitive to caffeine now that I've cut back a few years...but wow...

Yeah, some people can drink it like water. I like my coffee without sugar, and in the morning I have it with milk, later on without anything added. I could go through 10 cups a day easy. I don't feel like the caffeine has any stimulating effects on me at all. If anything, it makes me sleepy early in the afternoon.

I read the headline and it said 6 or so cups a day of coffee are NORMAL?!?!?! Geez.....I'd be climbing the walls. Do people actually normally drink that much coffee a day?

6 Cups a day is a little heavier than I usually do, especially in summer. Spread out over all waking hours, it isn't that much. A cup with breakfast, a cup mid-morning, a cup with lunch, a cup in the afternoon, a cup with dinner, perhaps a second with dessert. No, I usually stop after lunch, and switch to soda as the caffeine carrier

According to the interview with one of the study's authors on NPR today, one of the very important factors is that decaf works as well. Which is to say, the measured benefit probably is not from caffeine.

Indeed. Here's a PDF of the paper [wordpress.com] which has all the actual numbers. It also lists in their conclusions several possible investigation routes:

Coffee contains chlorogenic acids (CGAs), which inhibit glucose absorption in the intestine and may favorably alter levels of gut hormones, which affect insulin response (1). Quinides, the roasting products of CGAs, inhibit liver glucose production in experimental models (1). Coffee also contains lignans, phytoestrogens with potent antioxidant activity, which may have positive effects on glucose handling (37). In humans, coffee drinking has been cross-
sectionally associated with lower glucose levels after oral glucose loads and better insulin sensitivity (38–40). A cross-sectional study in women found a negative correlation between coffee consumption and circulating C-peptide, a marker of insulin secretion (41).
Insulin may promote tumor progression through the insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) receptors in cancer cells. Insulin levels have been associated with a greater risk of cancer progression or mortality among men diagnosed with prostate cancer (9–11), even though insulin has been unassociated (12,13) or inversely associated (14) with overall incidence.
Coffee is a major source of antioxidants and is estimated to provide half of total antioxidant intake in several populations (2,3). Coffee has been associated with improved markers of inflammation in cross-sectional studies and in a recent trial (4,42,43). Inflammation is hypothesized to play a role in the development of prostate cancer through the generation of proliferative inflammatory atrophy lesions (15). Various dietary antioxidants may reduce inflammation and have been associated with lower risk of advanced prostate cancer (44,45).
Coffee drinking may be associated with increased sex hormone–binding globulin (SHBG) and total testosterone levels (5). One study in Greek men found a positive association with estradiol levels but not with SHBG or testosterone (6), whereas another found no association between coffee and sex hormones in young Greek men (7). Coffee has been consistently associated with higher SHBG levels in women (46–49).
Sex hormones play a role in prostate cancer, though the relationships between circulating levels within normal ranges and risk have been difficult to elucidate. It has been hypothesized that although testosterone is necessary for the initial development of prostate cancer, it may limit progression of the disease (50,51). A pooled analysis of 18 prospective studies found an inverse association between SHBG levels and prostate cancer risk (51).

According to the interview with one of the study's authors on NPR today, one of the very important factors is that decaf works as well. Which is to say, the measured benefit probably is not from caffeine.

Yeah... TFA says they adjust for "potential confounding by smoking, obesity, and other variables"... but I wonder what some of those other variables and more importantly control groups are.

I'd be curious if it simply works with water... 6+ cups of coffee sounds awfully close to the 8 cups minimum daily recommended servings of water daily. I'd suspect the people at risk of developing prostate cancer simply don't drink enough, period.(eww, there's a gross non-sequitur)

Anyone who lives in the desert will tell you that thirst doesn't work very well as a self-regulating mechanism. By the time your body is telling you it's thirsty, you're already dehydrated. It's especially bad if you're hiking in the desert, because you're losing water so quickly.

Here in Arizona, we have to be very vigilant about drinking enough water throughout the day, even if we're just working in an office. I'll frequently feel a headache coming on if I don't.

It is surprising to those of us who think of coffee as "caffeine vehicle" first and foremost, followed closely by "good tasting" and "break from work." When I heard "coffee does good things" I was thinking "Caffeine does good things," not "phytoestrogens are undoubtedly what's doing the good thing in coffee!"

Not logical exactly, but yeah, the decaf part was a surprise to me. If for no other reason than "What type of horrible person would even think to test decaf."

The difference here is that for years scientists (in particular nutritionists) have been telling us that drinking a lot of coffee is bad for us and doing studies to try and prove it. Gradually, bit by bit, the studies have been coming back showing that not only is coffee not bad for us, it is actually good for us. For every study that shows that coffee has some minor negative health affect, there are two studies showing that coffee has some significant positive health affect. Sometime in the last 10 years t

Sometime in the last 10 years they finally gave up on the idea that coffee is bad for us.

That's not really how research works, even in nutrition. You get a result, you publish it if you have reason to think it's real. Researchers don't get together and decide they're going to publish results saying coffee good or coffee bad. For one thing, researchers LOVE to overturn previous models and results. You don't get attention or much funding for "We did a study and it showed exactly what everyone expected it would show." For another, conclusions should come from results and not vice versa. Some researchers have enough integrity to discard their theories and hypotheses when results disagree with what they think. Others just realize that if they get a result that proves them wrong, someone else will eventually, and it's better to prove yourself wrong first than someone else do it later.

The researchers here are undoubtedly not drawing any broad conclusions like "coffee is good for you," they're just saying it might prevent some forms of cancer. Any overarching conclusions like that are made by people who want the TL:DR version. Realistically, any chemical you put into your body that doesn't kill you right away is going to have good AND bad effects, and it's up to doctors and you yourself to weigh whether it's an overall good thing or bad thing. Coffee probably encourages other forms of cancer while preventing some forms and waking you up. No one has given up on the idea that coffee has some of those negative effects, just as no one was convinced coffee was entirely bad for you.

I don't know how you'd prove that statement, but if you can find me a review article saying "As agreed upon at the last nutritionists meeting, we present more evidence here that coffee bad." Otherwise, it seems to me that I could come up with one nutrition researcher saying coffee is good for you, or at least not bad, for any given 10 year time period.

I -am- a researcher (though not in nutrition) and thus could be guilty of being overly optimistic, but I do not see researchers of any field eagerly linin

Coffee contains a known psychoactive stimulant, one which many people find pleasant. This makes it a drug. Drugs are axiomatically evil(unless associated with rugged American individualism and/or cowboys). Therefore, coffee cannot possibly have any positive effects. Scientists! Get back to the lab and produce better results.

It is pretty foolish to lump coffee in with crack just because the umbrella word "drug" covers both. The risk/benefit ratio of one says nothing about the other. (It would make more sense to pick on alcohol, which is a commonly used drug with devastating effects for some users).

Disappointing that they didn't track hot tea drinkers as well. It would be interesting to know if this was associated with generally being better hydrated, or something specific to coffee.// just switched to green tea from coffee

Well, the abstract doesn't tell us what comparisons they made other than more coffee drunk vs less, but given that it's a Harvard study I'll extend the trust that they had decent control groups and biostatistics (and I'm not saying that just because I'm all doe-eyed about a big name school, I'm saying that because Harvard has probably the best public health program in the world).

Tea would be a pretty poor control, however; when testing a biochemical cocktail for health effects, when you want a control tha

I'd assume this was a survey and data mining exercise, that they didn't assign people randomly into groups and tell them to drink specific amounts of coffee. Since the abstract doesn't mention it they may not have asked people if they drink tea or not, so the tea drinkers would be distributed among every group (some drinking coffee in different amounts as well, some drinking no coffee). It would have been interesting to see that information mined separately. I don't see how it would have muddied the wate

Is it just me or does there seem to be a serious coffee lobby / PR organization at work here? No exaggeration, every three months for the last couple decades I've seen some story about the benefits of coffee on health. It is clearly legal because it is a workers' drug. It keeps people focused during work, while leaving them slightly frazzled afterwards so that they have no energy for anything else.

Did anyone read the articles on this? The benefit was found for those who drank SIX cups or more a day. Jumping off a tall building also reduces prostate cancer - by 100%.

Try asking google. Thus, the terms "+tea +cancer +correlation" turn up around 1.25 million hits right now. (You need the '+'s because all three words are just too common and give many millions of hits.) You'll find that lots of correlations have turned up, there is a similar connection as in the current story, but the statistical results alone are merely suggestive and not conclusive.

One recent story reported that drinking very hot tea is associated with an increased risk of esophageal cancer. In thi

That's actually one of the big areas of research for that particular cancer now: the early stage stuff, at least, is pretty curable; but the methods are invasive and often result in incontinence or impotence. There is thus a good deal of interest in knowing which tumors are on track to kill you relatively horribly, relatively quickly, and need to be treated aggressively, and which ones are just going to sit there, with a scheduled breakout ~10+ years after you die of something else entirely.

You don't want otherwise reasonably healthy 65 year olds dying of metastatic cancer; but you also don't want to have somebody spend a decade dribbling urine in order to remove a tumor that wasn't even going to be noticable outside of a diagnostic setting until a few years after the pneumonia got them anyway...

Not only does coffee help prevent prostate cancer, but so does regular masturbation too. A study came out in 2003, and then resurfaced in 2008 and 2010 that men who masturbate regularly can help reduce the risk of prostate cancer by as much as 40%.

So while nearly all men will get prostate cancer if they live long enough, I sure as hell won't!

The way this is phrased looks like an incomplete story. Why wouldn't sex work just as well as masturbation? What plausible reason would there be that wanking your doodle by hand works better than wanking it in a soft, pleasant vagina?

No. It's a 20 year study. 17% of men get prostate cancer over their lifetimes. If the study population were 50+ at the start that seems low. if the study population were under 30 at the start that that seems really high and I suspect their population consisted of Chernobyl residents...

Yes. An equal number of men die every year from prostate cancer as women from breast cancer, yet breast cancer receives an overwhelming majority of the press, funding, and research. Look up the article "Politics behind the pink." I guess it's because we all love tatas but the prostate just isn't very sexy. Kind of sad, really..

From a public health perspective, I think it's more important that we treat young women because we can add 40+ productive years to their life. For prostate cancer, you're typically adding 5-10 years to the lives of people who are on the edge of retirement. It's a worthy goal, but it's not where I would concentrate scarce resources.

I guess it's because we all love tatas but the prostate just isn't very sexy

Nope, it's because we think "Men last!" is a noble sentiment, although it's usually expressed in a more obfuscated but logically equivalent manner.

Men die of all causes at younger ages than women. Men are the majority victims in all forms of violent crime except (possibly) rape, where male victims are about 10% of the total, although under-reporting is such a huge problem no one really knows (or much cares) what the real number is. Men--especially young men--commit suicide up to five times as frequently a

One route by which a false causation could occur here is through one of the most obvious effects of caffeine - its a diuretic. The summary could have just as easily said "Pissing often helps prevent prostate cancer"

One route by which a false causation could occur here is through one of the most obvious effects of caffeine - its a diuretic. The summary could have just as easily said "Pissing often helps prevent prostate cancer"

The study does point out that decaf coffee had the same effect as regular, so it's not the caffeine, or any effect of the caffeine, that does this.

Even without caffeine, extra fluids will make you piss more. Constantly cleaning out your urinary tract sounds like a more feasible mechanism of action than some unidentified chemical in coffee that isn't common in other parts of the human diet. Decaf coffee isn't a valid control, water is.

But if that is the case, it's still causation; coffee does reduce the chances of prostate cancer, even if any other liquid mainly composed of water does the same. Causation doesn't mean it's the only cause.

No, because it being coffee is not the cause. The statement 'coffee prevents prostate cancer' contains the implicit assumption that coffee does so more than control. This may seem nitpicky, but summarising scientific research requires fairly precise use of language.

Actually that wouldn't be false causation, since drinking actually does cause pissing. It would just mean the result could be broadened to people who drink anything else that isn't too harmful. (Virtually all "causes" are indirect if you break things down enough.)

The number of potential reasons for the correlation is staggering. Think of the other things that could be different in the lifestyle and diet of someone that drinks 6 cups of coffee a day versus someone that drinks 1?

There's a difference. If drinking coffee really did reduce the risk of prostate cancer, it would make sense to encourage men to drink coffee. If it's just that people who drink coffee are at lower risk for some other reason, then encouraging men to drink more coffee will not reduce their risk of cancer.

But causation does imply corrrelation. Anyhow - don't dismiss this work because of the design. It provides a clue to something that might have great bearing on a rather nasty condition. With this epidemiological data in hand, scientists can now look at devising better designed more expensive research that will determine the relationship, if any, such as the one you propose.

Oh look, someone else who knows the snappy phrase, but doesn't understand it. Actually, that subject sounds familiar... you're the one who always posts this same crap, aren't you?

There are three possibilities - coffee reduces prostate cancer risk, reduced prostate cancer risk increases coffee consumption or a third factor increases coffee consumption and decreases prostate cancer risk. While the third one is possible, the first is much more likely, and even the summary says "indicates."

And no where in the summary, article or paper (OK, I didn't read the paper, but I seriously doubt it would make such a ridiculous claim) is it said that "Drinking coffee prevents cancer". The title kinda does if you read it that way, but a three word catchy title is hardly the "meat" of anything. All that's being claimed is a significant statistical correlation between drinking coffee and a reduced risk for this particular type of cancer.

Yes, I'm sure a Doctor of Science at the Harvard School of Medicine, publishing in the Journal of the Nancer Cancer Institute, has never taken a Stats 101 class, let alone attended even the first day of said class...

Hey! That's not how we do things in AMERICA! In America we have one giant plastic cup of "expresso" (really? you go overboard with the superlatives but don't even know how to spell it?) in the morning, a second big giant plastic cup of espresso in the afternoon, and top it off with a Monster energy drink in the evening! Some people use "5 hour energy" instead, but that's for WUSSES because those bottles are small and small things are for WUSSES!!!!

The last few companies I've worked at have been going to progressively lower-quality coffee in the office. While they were good, you could hardly taste the urine in the coffee. After three or four rounds of coffee budget cuts, the urine actually improved the flavor.

I can't stand Starbucks' insipid brand after spending the last couple of years going to a local place where the coffee actually tastes like coffee (And almost never like urine.)

I'd think 6 cups a day is pretty average for many coffee drinkers, not just Americans. I'm in the UK, and certainly in my workplace we have a round of coffee/tea about once an hour, so 6 mugs of coffee a day is pretty typical. There's nothing wrong with using it as a replacement for water, it does the job just fine, and tastes better.

As a heavy consumer of both the American dirt water and more "cultured" European styles of coffee, I will defend the American drip coffee as a product of utility. Cheaper, easier to make, can be kept in a pot for hours without degrading, and about 30% more caffeine per serving (130mg in a cup of drip coffee, 100mg in a shot of espresso). We drink that dirt water to survive, not to savor.

That doesn't mean we don't enjoy the finer coffees (I will obsess over a French-pressed dark roast Sumatran), it just me

Oh, I'm sorry. I prefer hot American coffee (no sugar, lots of milk) to hot tea. But, obviously my preferences offend you and I should stop drinking what *I* like and drink what *you* like. It's not like I'm over there stealing your cup of "expresso" (Ah, a coffee snob who can't even spell their own favored drink) and replacing it with a Venti Iced Caramel Frappaccino. I like a nice espresso in a coffee house sometimes too, but its not what gets me up in the morning.